Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Gibson
Read between
October 12, 2017 - August 5, 2022
Despite the world’s rebellion against its Maker, God gives his Son so that all who believe may have eternal life.
the death of Christ—portrayed here as an actual propitiation for the sins of the world, not a potential one58—is for all without distinction, not all without exception.
By explicitly praying for his people and not the world, Jesus makes it clear that his redemptive work—including his incarnation, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation—is done particularly for his people in contrast to the world.
When the Pharisees exclaim, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!” (John 12:19), they certainly do not mean every single person without exception went after Jesus. Or when Jesus says to the high priest, “I have spoken openly to the world” (John 18:20), he clearly does not mean that he has spoken to every single person without exception. As a result, when texts such as John 1:29 speak of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” it does not follow that this must and can only mean that Jesus makes atonement possible for every single
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The repeated insistence that Christ’s death is not merely for the Jewish people but extends to all people without distinction is a glorious truth. Jesus is not merely the Jewish Messiah, but ultimately the “Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Because of this, the gospel can be freely and indiscriminately offered to all in the confidence that those whom the Father has given to the Son are taken from Jew and Gentile alike, and that the Father will draw them to Christ.
the Son came down from heaven in order to glorify his Father by doing his will, which was to save those whom the Father had given him.
To particularize the atonement makes God’s love no more intense or precious.
The curse of Adam is overturned by the grace of Christ, and the life which Christ bestows swallows up the death which came from Adam. The parts of this comparison, however, do not correspond. Paul ought to have said that the blessing of life reigns and flourishes more and more through the abundance of grace, instead of which he says that believers “shall reign.” The sense is the same, however, for the kingdom of believers is in life, and the kingdom of life is in believers.
Christ’s work in Romans 5 is related to believers, to those who receive his grace (v. 17); Adam’s work relates to all humankind without exception (v. 12).
Christ does not die just for individuals who are clumped together into an aggregate group called “the elect.”
Christ does indeed save individuals, but by and through the salvation of individuals He saves the world. He who forgets this can never do justice to the universalistic passages of Scriptures. Christ is the Savior of the world.
All those connected to him are part of a new humanity, they belong to a new age, they have been saved for a new world: “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). How true.
“However few or many His people may be today or tomorrow, in the end His people will be the world.”
Reformed theology at its best champions a true, genuine, achievable, eschatological universalism.
“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).
definite atonement grounds and motivates the cause of evangelism, for what is offered to people is not the opportunity or possibility of salvation, but salvation itself.
Paul views the gospel as the end of the ages in which God’s grace and love is to be proclaimed to all peoples of the earth. He is the “great universalizer of the gospel.”141 In this regard, the “all without distinction” meaning should be seen for what it actually is: all-inclusive, all-embracing—no one is left out: not Gentile, not women, not slave, not barbarian, not children, not elderly, not poor, not white, not black—not anyone!
As Husband and Head, Christ died for his bride and body; as Cosmic Savior, he died for the world; and as the Last Adam, he died for a new humanity. In this regard, Christ truly is the Savior of the world—an innumerable number of people from every tribe and language and nation.
redemption applied flows from redemption accomplished.
“there exists a life-giving union between Christ and his own that is similar to, but more powerful than, the death-producing union between Adam and his own.”
Christ’s death for people cannot be viewed in separation from his union with those same people:
So the Son is active in applying redemption, but he acts by equipping the Spirit to do the application. They are always mutually implicated, though in each phase one of them sets the other one up to take the leading role. Just as Christ (enabled by the Spirit) accomplished redemption, so the Spirit (making Christ present in faith) applies it. Nowhere in the twofold economy is there a simple departure or complete absence of one of the agents. We are always in the Father’s two hands at once.
One of the main problems with Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Amyraldianism is that they introduce dissonance into the Trinity, such that the Son intends to die for all, but the Father elects only some and the Spirit draws only some.
Christ died for all kinds of people, not just some elite group.
a new meaning for a word must not be accepted in ambiguous texts if an established meaning for the word makes sense in the text under consideration.
Jesus’s suffering was effective in its design and purpose, in that it actually brought “sons to glory.”
He has not merely made salvation possible; he has actually saved those whom he has chosen.
Did the Father in sending Christ, and did Christ in coming into the world to make atonement for sin, do this with the design or for the purpose of saving only the elect or all men? That is the question, and that only is the question.2
If God does not regenerate us by a monergistic re-creative act in which we ourselves are “altogether passive” (WCF, 10.2), we will remain dead; and if he does not give us the gift of faith, not one single human being will ever be able to free himself from the shackles of unbelief.
There is a love that not only secures a warrant for the prisoner’s release but that actually opens the prison doors and pulls the prisoner free.
other blemish, but holy and blameless” (NIV). Clearly, the intended outcome of the cross was not merely forgiveness, but holiness; or, as the WCF (8.5) expresses it, Christ “purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.” He died to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18), not to leave us in limbo.
The Trinity works in harmony rather than in unison—but not in discord.
if Peter had persisted in denying Christ, he would not have been saved, while the promise would have been effected if Judas had repented.27
all Adamic persons are guilty even for the mere possession of a fallen nature prior to their own sinning in that nature, this is not because the nature has sinned and is guilty as a nature: it is because another person has acted in it as their federal representative, and because they, as persons, are conceived in it.
The ransom was a life for lives (ψυχὴ ἀντὶ ψυχῶν), not a punishment for punishments (τιμωρία ἀντὶ τιμωριῶν).
It is no small thing to reckon that a nature can be capable of bearing sin, guilt, and punishment.
the offerings purify the worshipers.
Levitical atonement was definite atonement.
When measured by Scripture, only definite atonement counts as penal substitutionary atonement.
Any attempt to insist that Christ died for all without exception raises the specter of God punishing the same sin twice when he punishes the lost.
any preacher who consistently holds to an indefinite atonement without universalism ought logically to resort to some similarly modified preaching of the nature of the atonement. That they do not is a reminder of how the Lord graciously protects us from the logical consequences of those errors that we all undoubtedly hold somewhere in our own theological systems.
The sufficiency of the cross shows the sinner outside of Christ the one place where refuge from God’s wrath can be found. It assures him that there is no sin too evil to be forgiven, no sin too bad for the blood of Christ. It is then, as the sinner is united to Christ and believes, that he actually finds the comfort of forgiveness. The believing sinner can be assured that Christ died effectively for him because he bore the punishment for the specific sins of his particular people, among whom he is now numbered. Definite atonement does not undermine the powerful preaching of the cross of the
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when Moses states that God is a consuming fire, we must not think that God is a chemical process produced by the chain reaction that results from the combination of an oxidizer, heat, and fuel. Rather, he is the God who punishes those who break his covenant because he defends his own name (Deut. 4:23–24).
A society can measure years in prison, but it can never accurately gauge the degree of suffering borne by any prisoner.
Contrast God: he knows exactly what suffering an individual bears because he knows us better than we know ourselves, which means that divine punishments can have a perfection about them that is absent from human punishments.
“none ever stooped so low as Christ, if we consider either the infinite height that he stooped from, or the great depth to which he stooped.”
it is the good news of a sacrificial offering so powerful that no sin can be deemed too great for its atoning efficacy.
Whatever the metaphor of repayment may mean, these arguments show that justice is not satisfied by the simple reenactment of the sin against the sinner. Punishment is not a return in that sense. Nor is it a perfect “echo” or “mirror” of sin. A perfect echo neither adds to nor removes from the original sound; in a perfect reflection nothing is lost or altered by the absorption or scattering of light. The perfect echo or mirror of a sin would be a sin.
Sin casts contempt on the greatness and majesty of God. The language of it is that he is a despicable being, not worthy to be honored or feared, not so great that his displeasure is worthy to be dreaded; and that his threatenings of wrath are despicable things.
Punishment takes the form of suffering inflicted on the sinner because the person of the sinner, body and soul, is the appropriate sphere in which to answer the sin. The sin attaches to the sinner as his act, arising from his will, and so he is the proper place in which to punish it. As O’Donovan explains, “Punishment is thus justified in general because the person, property, or liberty of the condemned party is the only possible, or the most apt, locus for the enactment of a judgment.”
